


Twenty Dollar Nosebleed

by artificialmay



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Songfic, lmao enjoy the first fic I ever posted in this fandom, tw implied self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 15:43:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11877678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificialmay/pseuds/artificialmay
Summary: This was the first fic I posted (?) regarding RPDR and it’s a Pearlet one shot that’s essentially based on the song “Twenty Dollar Nose Bleed” by Fall Out Boy. I hope you guys like it. I think I use female pronouns and names throughout.





	Twenty Dollar Nosebleed

_Have you ever wanted to disappear?_  
Pearl had particular talents, it seemed. She was a cruiser, that needed to be manually started up, like a rusty old car on a frosty winter’s morning. She was lacklustre until she had come out of her shell, and God, that had made for good television. Television Pearl was laughable and just a touch frustrating. Television Pearl became an extrovert eventually.

_And join a monastery_  
But, thought Pearl. That’s not who I thought I would be. Pearl was a certain person: quiet. Reserved. And unlike Michelle and Ru, Pearl and her friends hadn’t thought that was necessarily a bad thing

_Go out and preach on Manic Street_  
And maybe a little later than everyone else, she’d been kickstarted. The rust bucket car grinding gears through frost. It was a cliche that Pearl now hated, but it was accurate. Pearl has woken up.

_Who will I be when I wake up next to a stranger?_  
She’d woken up, and she’d woken up to beauty, and self possession, and all Pearl had thought she was, but embodied by another.

The strangers on the race- and the most elusive one, who Pearl would stare at from under half shut lids across the room.

_On a passenger plane_  
Her journey kept going, and going, and she revelled in the beautiful girl and the beautiful boy she had met.

_Permanent jet lag_  
Pearl had woken up, but felt as though she’d woken up in the wrong time. She wasn’t beautiful enough or charming enough. A shadow of a star, and she knew that when in the presence of a sun, a shadow is all but erased.

_Please take me back, please take me back_  
And she’d gone back home, arm in arm with her sun, awake and unafraid, in quiet admiration of the champion, who’d deserved to win, who was Pearl’s own personal private prize.

_I’m a stray dog sick_  
In between cigarettes and warm walks, that enveloped her in a fiery embrace that could never be matched by the embraces she shared in secret with Violet, she knew somewhere, that a secret amour would never last, and that an amour like Violet was far too perfect for her.

_Please let me in_  
But she didn’t listen to that voice often and so she let her vice in, and Violet let her in and they existed, revelling in each other’s humanity, painting each other sunsets with their eyes, their words, their souls.

_The mad key’s tripping_  
An ignorant bliss. A hint of a stolen kiss in a smoky bar, a squeezed hand before going onstage, and a hidden glance. The glances, that burned with desire and comfort, but revealed something more, something a little more vulnerable.

_Singing vows before we exchange smoke rings_  
Some days she and Violet would just lie on her balcony, as she smoked slim cigarettes, and exhaled misty rings to the heavens.  
“They look like little hearts,” Violet would say.  
“They look like smoke rings,” Pearl would reply, and then Violet would protest, and Pearl would find the way she was so passionate about the little things endearing and the smoke rings would drift away forgotten as they kissed each other softly and loved each other roughly.

_Give me a pen_  
Pearl would write her life into her music, and weave intricate tapestries of words, as she tried to find the best way to say “I love you”

_Call me_  
Pearl would smile as she’d see Violet in the club, alive, as if every nerve in his body has been coated in diamonds, diamonds that reflect her eyes and Pearl is awake.

If Michelle Visage could see me now, she thinks.

_Mr Benzedrine_  
And it is, really, the closest thing to a paradise. It’s not perfect, what reality ever is? But it’s rousing Pearl, and Pearl can conquer the world when Violet’s there.

_But don’t let the doctor in_  
Violet conquered the world, and Pearl is there in the shadows, ruling alongside, but no one must ever know.

_Don’t let the doctor in_  
Is it one sided? Pearl doesn’t know, nor does she care. She gets miffed when Violet tells him she doesn’t want the world to find out.  
“We are our own world,” she says, and Pearl agrees, because Violet is her world, but Pearl’s finally awake and she wants to the rest of the inconsequential world to see them.

_It feels like fourteen carats but no clarity_  
And for the first time they fight.  
“Why does it matter so much?”  
“Does it even matter?”

A paradise still, but now cold with whispering doubts, and burning with secrecy and the iron flavour of clashing wants, even though what they want is the other.

_When I look at the man who would be King_  
Pearl still looks at Violet and sees the queen who she’s always known, and every time she loses her breath a little, like Violet did on that death becomes her runway, waist cinched to oblivion, and Pearl sometimes thinks that Violet’s obsession with oblivion will kill her one day.

_Man who would be King_  
Pearl looks at herself and sees someone still lying to herself, and looks at Violet and sees someone who is lying to the world.

_Goes the desert the same war his dad rehearsed_  
It’s the same conversation every night now. Kisses soured by losses, and the knowledge that the differences are causing cracks in their soft, butterfly embraces.

_Came back back with flags on coffins and said_  
And in the end, Pearl doesn’t want to keep living in Violet’s beautiful, irresistible head. And they go their own ways, and Pearl doesn’t fall asleep, she stays burning. She will get Violet back, and she will open her eyes. Pearl will be the waker this time.

_“We won, oh we won”_  
But it doesn’t seem like Violet wants to be woken up, as she continues dreaming across the country, a lavender heaven, and Pearl can no longer look at the colour violet without remembering the days when the colour existed just for her and he wonders why she let it go.

_Permanent jet lag_  
They’re separated by miles now, and Violet is off living an ephemeral life that Pearl swears she won’t look at. She swears black and blue until her soul is bruised but it doesn’t stop her from following Violet’s every move online in the witching hours of the morning and she stains her own skin the same blues and smoke hues when she remembers what she let go.

_Please take me back, please take me back_  
She was bloody selfish and now her world doesn’t have an axis. It’s her own damn fault, she tells herself. Why did I try to conquer the world, when all I needed was Violet?

_I’m a stray dog sick_  
She doesn’t sleep, because the dreams that come are of the one girl she doesn’t want to see, an image of elegance, twirling seductively behind her eyelids.

_Please let me in_  
And every time she picks up the phone she hates herself for still getting excited.   
“Is it her?” She tells herself she’s stupid, and her fingers itch to ask if Violet’s okay, what she’s doing, when she’s coming back home.

_The mad key’s tripping_  
One day she’s locked out of her apartment and she remembers that Violet still has the spare key. But she prises open a window, and screws down the lid on the hurt and curiosity bubbling in her stomach. She climbs through the windows and thinks “this isn’t healthy.”

_Singing vows before we exchange smoke rings_  
She performs at her shows and remembers the days when she’d just lie with Violet and talk about the world and smoke. Pearl hasn’t picked up a cigarette since the day she left, the day Violet left, the memory too embedded in her brain. Pearl found it ironic that she was a typecast ‘better person’ now that the best person was gone.

_Give me a pen_  
One day Violet came up on another queen’s Instagram, Violet’s face in the other girl’s neck. Pearl shut her phone off and didn’t look at it for two days, staying in her apartment listening to summer rain batter the roof and windows.

_Call me_  
She didn’t look at her phone and she didn’t care about the people who rang her asking if she was okay because the people who were ringing her weren’t the people she wanted to be talking to. Pearl was going back into her shell.

_Mr Benzedrine_  
The energy that had once consumed her was slowly fading out, but, she thought bitterly, so was the longing, and the hurt.

_But don’t let the doctor in_  
When she closed her eyes now, she didn’t see Violet’s hand entwined with hers. She saw nothing, and nothing was good. Wasn’t it?

_Don’t let the doctor in_  
Days passed. She still thought of Violet everyday, but not with desire, but with regret, the way one thinks of a high school boyfriend, a honey coloured afterglow. Living again. This is what living is.

_Ba ba ba Benzedrine. Bla bla bla Benzedrine_  
In the warm glow of the sun Pearl is reminded of the way she used to look at Violet like she was a glowing entity, something to bright for her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off. Transfixed, completely and utterly.

_Ba ba ba Benzedrine_  
It’s only when night smears its darkness across the sky that the panic begins again, panic and regret, but mostly regret. Guilt, and shame and regret wash through her head, a tune she can’t quite remove, and it’s driving her insane. She tells herself that Violet no longer matters. She knew from the beginning it was doomed.

_Only one book really matters_  
For the first time in months she looks at Violet’s social media, living her life the way she always had, better than everyone else. And not needing Pearl, because Violet wasn’t a cripple who desperately relied on someone else. Violet wasn’t Pearl.

_The rest of the proof is on the television_  
The world is turning and it’s falling apart. Sometimes she watches reruns of season 7 just to hear Violet speaking to her.

_Call me Mr Benzedrine_  
And it’s been six months since they parted, and Pearl’s plants have sprouted and died, and the balcony lays memorial to the days that once were. Pearl throws out a bunch of things and calls it symbolic.

_But don’t let the doctor in_  
She wonders if Violet still feels the same way.

_Have you ever wanted to disappear?_  
It’s hard for her, but Pearl forgets. Closes the chapter. She won’t see Violet again, never run her fingers through her soft hair or dream her.

No.

This is the end.  
•••••••••••••••••••••••  
 _It’s not me its you_  
If you asked Violet why was she so adamant to keep her relationship a secret, she didn’t know if she would have been able to give a straight answer. There was something enticing and addictive about something secret.

_Actually it’s the taxidermy of me and you_  
And she could understand Pearl but at the same time, be terrified of the world. Everything she did, Pearl did was held to a lens, and the world would scrutinise them, tiny little things, blown out.

_Untie the balloons from around my neck and ground me_  
Violet could see how she’d changed Pearl, but what was more profound were the little things Pearl had instilled in Violet. She took things slower now, she stopped to think. There was a beauty in quiet, in slowness. She could understand the beauty of closing your eyes, and not waking up, and she hates herself for that.

_I’m just a racehorse on the track_  
Violet was a winner, and she knew what she could do. And regret wasn’t a thing she had time for. She thought of Pearl every day, when her tea reflected the sunlight, when a windchime tickled the air, when she inhaled. She was so used to breathing in Pearl.

_Send me back to the glue factory_  
All the guilt that had been unfamiliar a a year ago that had now branded grey circles under Violet’s eyes had brought her to realise she needed to do something. And so now, Violet walked down the street, not flashy tonight, inconspicuous, to the club that advertised “Pearl Liaison, tonight.”

_Always thought I’d float away and never come back_  
I didn’t listen to you Pearl, she thinks, and goddamnit that was the worst mistake I’ve ever made

_But I’ve got enough miles on my cars_  
She pauses outside the club door, music filtering out into the street, life, energy. Pearl. It’s been so long, and so angry, and Violet doesn’t even know what she might have done to the queen.

_To fly the boys home on my own_  
It would be so easy to just leave. Turn away and keep living in tense regret.

_But you know me, I like being all alone_  
But whether it be fate, or destiny, or simply Violet’s overstuffed mind she doesn’t.

_And keeping you all alone_  
She thinks of herself, and what she would want. Violet fights for what she wants.

_You say you’re not listening and I said I’m wishing_  
I said-  
I said   
So Violet swallows her pride and pushes open the door.


End file.
